ABSTRACT
As a scientist, I am specially grateful to Professor R.V.Jones, orator in 1957, for the careful study which he made of the impact of Crabtree upon some men of science who were working during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Professor Jones dealt in particular with the relationship between Crabtree and certain famous physicists. I decided to examine in a little detail the connection between Crabtree and some of the chemists who were known to him. This has led by pure chance, and indeed how many discoveries of importance in science are made other than by pure chance, to certain information which I modestly suggest will prove of considerable importance for our understanding of the work and importance of our great poet. For me personally it had been doubly exciting to find that Crabtree had some connections with Australia.
